


Anything To Make You Smile

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Black Panther (2018) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes in Wakanda, Friendship, Gen, Genius Shuri (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 08:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: He still hasn't got over that, really, and it hits him every time he sees Shuri's face: the sense of peace it brings him to know that in her amazing brain she could make it possible for him to go under and come back and not feel any pain.





	Anything To Make You Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the second end credits tag of Black Panther. 
> 
> Seeing my long-time fave and my new fave together was like "Oh hai, my unexpected/unlikely friendships kink, there you are!" and I just wanted the chance to think about them being friends.

Shuri's face wasn't the last one Bucky had seen before the fog of cryosleep overtook him—that belonged to Steve, of course—but it was the first one he saw when he woke. It took him a while to orient himself: to recall who the princess and the Wakandan doctors actually were, to connect them with sanctuary and safety. Steve wasn't there, but T'Challa was; at the time, though, the thing Bucky noticed most was that there was no pain. He came out of it slowly, peacefully, lying on a padded table and covered with warm blankets, and all around him the sound of soft voices speaking a language he didn't know—and then he saw that sweet, smiling face with a view. No machine to send lightning into his brain, no armed handlers, no icy water. No torture, orders, fear. The only thing they'd wanted from him was to know if he felt all right, because they'd never had reason to put someone into cryo and they wanted to make sure they hadn't hurt him.

He still hasn't got over that, really, and it hits him every time he sees Shuri's face: the sense of peace it brings him to know that in her amazing brain she could make it possible for him to go under and come back and not feel any pain. She's the same age Rebecca was when Bucky shipped out, and though she couldn't be farther from a white Irish girl of average intelligence in 1940s America, she reminds him so much of the fragments of Becca he recalls that it makes his heart ache furiously. Although it makes Bucky smile, too, because teenage girls are the same the world over no matter what century, and her goofiness is a balm.

Shuri laughs at him all the time, bright and musical, and sometimes she cries for him, because as fierce and strong as Shuri is, she has a tender heart. The doctors and Shuri spend time with him going over the protocols Hydra used to put him on ice and wake him, to implant abilities inside his skull, find out how the arm worked, and just how they'd carved out Bucky Barnes to make the Winter Soldier—understanding the old tech would make it easier for them to create something new, something kinder, and though they try to hide it, he sees it on their faces: disgust and horror. What the world is like outside Wakanda, what people do to each other. He doesn't deserve their empathy, Bucky believes, but they give it to him nonetheless. The first time Bucky told her about the waking process a storm cloud passed over her face and she muttered darkly, "To be brilliant enough to create these things back then and to do such evil with it..."

"Yeah," he'd said, "I'm right there with you." Shuri's often mystified by how he plays off what happened to him, but he doesn't really know how to explain that it helps keep him sort of sane—and she's so young, and so upbeat, and the last thing he wants is for her to see him as just some sad lump she has to take care of because her brother made her.

Most of their moments aren't that dark, anyway. The majority of the time Shuri is teasing him about everything from his "hipster Jesus" hair and beard to his "weird old man" expressions, and she calls him _Invader_ a lot, now that he's finally convinced her to stop calling him Sergeant Barnes. The little boys and girls who come around to the hut where he's staying aren't quite confident enough yet to tease him, but he's breaking down their defenses: before he got the arm he'd awe them by tossing them up and catching them one-handed or spinning a bunch of them around and around as they held on to his arm until they got so dizzy they nearly threw up. They thought no one was as strong as the Black Panther. They're intrigued by the texture of his hair and he lets them do crazy things to it. "They think it is like a pony's," Shuri translated for him, and when she sees the ridiculous styles they give him, she'll laugh so hard she doubles over and tears run down her cheeks.

Shuri and Dr. Matembu, one of the brain specialists, want to solve the puzzle of his missing memories and brain damage, so Bucky spends a lot of time up at the Design Group lab, where they ask a lot of questions while they scan him, mapping neurons and other stuff that he doesn't quite understand but he nods at as though he does. They were reluctant at first, because sometimes that means attaching an electrode or there's a machine at his head, but their concern makes it all seem so simple. One day they showed Bucky some old photographs and newsreels, monitoring the physical responses as he recalled each one, and when the film that had been at the museum in DC popped up, Bucky'd paused, freezing it. Shuri looked at him and Steve in their uniforms, cracking each other up and grinning like the dumb kids they were back then, and she dissolved into girlish laughter. "Oh, my goodness, your faaaaace!" she said, and replayed the video, laughing more. "The way you look at each other! I _totally_ ship it."

He'd stared at her for a while, because while he loved to make her laugh, he had no idea why. "Sheep?" he'd asked.

"Shi-i-i-ip," Shuri said, rolling her eyes and giving him a look of pure disdain, then laughing again.

"Oh. I thought maybe it was a word I hadn't learned yet." In a way, he supposed it was, even if it was English—not that it had cleared his confusion up in any way. Dr. Matembu shook her head as Shuri went over to her hologram keyboard thing to get some read-outs.

"I don't understand half of what that girl says," she'd offered in commiseration, and he'd sighed with relief. But you could see how much they all loved her, and not just because she was the princess.

One of many things Bucky's learning in his stay here is the language—mastering the click has been murder, but everyone is incredibly patient with him, and the kids love the chance to practice the English they're learning in school. Shortly after he'd received the new arm, Bucky and Shuri had been sitting by the lake, enjoying the peace of sunset, while she ran through some of the features she'd built into it and watched him practice fine motor controls, in case any adjustments were necessary. She'd suddenly looked up at him and asked, "You knew many languages as the Winter Soldier, right?" At his nod, she frowned. "But how did you learn them?" He'd thought maybe there was an implication he was doing terribly at learning Xhosa.

"I didn't. It was some kind of programming: they'd park me in front of a screen and...eventually I knew it. Like with the waking process—ocular stimulation, lights and things."

"How many languages?" Shuri had asked.

"Man...I think about ten. I'm not sure, since a lot of stuff is still messed up and I might be able to speak something if I were in the country and hearing it spoken around me."

"But they never gave you Xhosa?" She hmphed, made the noise she always makes when they talk about the colonizers and invaders, it sounded kind of like "ehhya." He didn't blame her one bit for being disgusted. "I think my next project should be a translator. Once I am through with fixing you." Bucky supposed some men might hate being the pet project of a sixteen-year-old, but you'd never find him complaining when she said things like that. He _is_ getting fixed, in a way he could never have imagined or hoped for back in those days when he was trying to pull himself out of the grave. He is her project, and he knows how damn lucky he is.

"A translator. Sort of... Like on that television show from the 1960s, where they're in space but everyone can understand each other."

Her face had lit up with glee. " _Star Trek_! You know it! There are so many good ideas in it to make reality," she'd said and they'd spent the next half hour distracted by talking about TV shows and movies he'd watched while he was in Romania. He had no doubt that any device she could come up with would be more elegant than anything anyone else could invent, in this world or even the one Steve's friend Thor comes from.

His arm is proof of that. It's supremely elegant in appearance—"form _and_ function," Shuri'd insisted. The way the plates shift and move is so subtle and refined he can't believe it's the same tech at the root of it, and the way they tied it into his musculoskeletal system was far less damaging than the old one. But then, they cared about him and saw him as a human being, not a weapon.

"Take my hand," Shuri says in the lab one day. He looks at her quizzically. Though she touches him when they're working on things, he's always reticent about initiating that himself—they might be friends, but she is royalty, after all, and also, he doesn't want Ayo to take his head off. Both T'Challa and Shuri insisted he not call them "Your Majesty" and "Your Highness" from the beginning, but it still feels disrespectful to his 1930s sensibilities. When he does reach over to put his hand on hers, Shuri's skin is warm and soft, except for the slight calluses at the edges of her fingers, just like the ones Steve used to have where he held his art pencils, or later where he caught his shield—

"Oh my god," Bucky says, stunned to realize that it's his left hand this is registering through. "How did you—how could—"

"Because I'm a genius, genius!" and then she breaks into a fit of laughter. Even though she explains it all, he's completely joyfully lost in the science. "But if it gets blasted off again, it will hurt like mad." Abruptly Shuri gets somber. "If you want, though, I could change it back." He shakes his head: he'd rather take the risk.

Bucky's been thinking about that a lot lately, especially now that he has the arm. What does he have with which to repay all this kindness? Nothing, really, the only currency he has is based in violence, the damage he can do. The people on this continent have had enough of that, and he's more than aware the Winter Soldier would have had a hand in some of it.

The question gets answered—well, at least a little bit—when Shuri, T'Challa, and Okoye show up at the hut. He's been helping the boys with their chores, but they ditch him to swarm around their new king.

"Oooohhh, you are going to diiiie," Shuri says in a sing-song. "Better get ready, because your boyfriend's back in town. Reunited and it feels so good. Do you need to check your hair? Your breath?"

His jaw drops and both T'Challa and Okoye roll their eyes; Okoye hisses something at Shuri that Bucky can't hear. It doesn't stop Shuri at all. Steve and Sam Wilson are inbound from some operation they've been on for months; he's spoken to Steve by phone but hasn't seen him in the weeks he's been awake. His heart's pounding and he can feel his right palm get clammy with sweat. Shuri offers him the chance to come to the lab for some anxiety medicine: "I don't want all my hard work to be wasted when you swoon and drop dead." Strong words for someone Bucky's pretty sure has a crush on Sam: when he said as much to her one day she got the most embarrassed look and too quickly exclaimed, "What? No! He's so old!"

T'Challa very gently puts his hand on her shoulder and turns her in the other direction. "Now that my little sister has spoiled the story..." But he grins at Bucky, telling him to come to the palace with them to meet Steve and Sam. He also has a favor to ask, or more accurately, the general does. T'Challa steers Shuri a little ways away, in the direction of the city.

Okoye and Bucky stand there for a while and look out at the water. He knows she's never been happy about him and Steve being here, and he thinks that's smart. Eventually she says, "If we are to do as my king wishes and be part of the larger world, we must be prepared for everything, I believe. We must know our enemies, as well as our friends. The way they think, how they fight." She turns to him with her appraising stare. "I understand if you would prefer not to think much about your days as the Soldier and what they did to you, but you know more than anyone about their methods and their minds."

"Yeah. I do." He knows sooner or later this safe haven has to go. Either he'll follow Steve out into the world because Steve _is_ the world, or his staying here could endanger the Wakandans. He'd rather die than risk their world.

"If you could share with us what you know, train and show us what we might be missing in technique..."

"Anything. Anything I can do for Wakanda, I would be happy to." His enthusiasm seems to amuse her; they're usually so reserved around one another. They return their gazes to the lake. "I'm probably going to get my ass kicked, though, aren't I?" He's seen those vibranium weapons and watched a Dora Milaje fight practice. "Even with this," and he holds up his new arm.

"Yes, you will." For the first time since he woke up, he manages to get a grin out of her. "But I am sure you will give us a test, eventually. Tomorrow, then? After you and the captain have—reunited."

Bucky tries not to laugh. She motions at him to walk with her. One of the little girls runs to Okoye and tugs on her arm, and Okoye bends to pick her up. That girl will definitely be a Dora when she grows up.

He sees Shuri and T'Challa off in the distance, laughing and talking, waiting for them. Shuri turns around and yells, "Hurry _up_. I can't wait to see this!" and Bucky shakes his head and closes his eyes for a second. They follow after, once Okoye hands the girl off to her mother.

They gave him his life back when he thought he didn't even want it. Whatever he has, whatever he is, belongs also to Wakanda now, especially to Shuri. His time here will end, like all things do, but for as long as he has it, as long as he gets to see that face filled with light, he'll cherish it.

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/171475313335/new-fic-black-panther-tag)
> 
> Yup, that's a Cap comics reference in there.
> 
> TItle from Band of Horses.


End file.
